By Andrew Hitchcock, 26 Feb 2006. He also wrote the Rothschild timeline.
Here is an illustrated version of this timeline.

Economists continually try and sell the public the idea that recessions or depressions are a natural part of what they call the “business cycle”.

This timeline below will prove that is simply not the case. Recessions and depressions only occur because the Central Bankers manipulate the money supply, to ensure more and more is in their hands and less and less is in the hands of the people.

Central Bankers developed out of money changers and it is with these people we pick the story up in 48 B.C. below.
48 B.C. Julius Caesar took back from the money changers the power to coin money and then minted coins for the benefit of all. With this new, plentiful supply of money, he established many massive construction projects and built great public works. By making money plentiful, Caesar won the love of the common people.

But the money changers hated him for it and this is why Caesar was assassinated. Immediately after his assassination came the demise of plentiful money in Rome, taxes increased, as did corruption.

Eventually the Roman money supply was reduced by 90 per cent, which resulted in the common people losing their lands and homes.
30 A.D. Jesus Christ in the last year of his life uses physical force to throw the money changers out of the temple. This was the only time during the the life of his ministry in which he used physical force against anyone.

When Jews came to Jerusalem to pay their Temple tax, they could only pay it with a special coin, the half-shekel. This was a half-ounce of pure silver, about the size of a quarter. It was the only coin at that time which was pure silver and of assured weight, without the image of a pagan Emperor, and therefore to the Jews it was the only coin acceptable to God.

Unfortunately these coins were not plentiful, the money changers had cornered the market on them, and so they raised the price of them to whatever the market could bear. They used their monopoly they had on these coins to make exorbitant profits, forcing the Jews to pay whatever these money changers demanded.

Jesus threw the money changers out as their monopoly on these coins totally violated the sanctity of God's house. These money changers called for his death days later.
1024 The money changers had control of Medieval England's money supply and at this time were generally known as goldsmiths. Paper money started out and this was simply a receipt you would get after depositing gold with a goldsmith, in their safe rooms or vaults. This paper started being traded as it was far more convenient than carrying round a lot of heavy gold and silver coins.

Over time, to simplify the process, the receipts were made to the bearer, rather than to the individual depositor, making it readily transferable without the need for a signature. This, also, broke the tie to any identifiable deposit of gold.

Eventually the goldsmiths recognized that only a fraction of depositors ever came in and demanded their gold at any one time, so they found out how they could cheat on the system. They started to issue more receipts than they had gold to back those receipts and no one would be any the wiser. They would loan out these receipts which were not backed by the gold they had in their depositories and collect interest on them.

This was the birth of the system we know today as Fractional Reserve Banking, and like this system of today this meant the goldsmiths were able to make astronomical amounts of money by loaning out, what was essentially fraudulent receipts, as they were for gold the goldsmiths didn't even possess. As they gradually got more confident they would loan out up to 10 times the amount they had in their deposits.

To simplify how they made money on this, let's give an example in which a goldsmith charges the same rate of interest to creditors and debtors. In this example a goldsmith would pay interest of 6% on gold you had deposited with them, and then charge 6% interest on money, I mean fraudulent receipts, you borrowed from them. As they would lend out ten times what you had deposited with them, whilst they're paying you 6% interest, they are making 60% interest. This is on your gold.

The goldsmiths also discovered that their control of this fraudulent money supply gave them control over the economy and the assets of the people. They exacted their control by rowing the economy between easy money and tight money.

The way they did this was to make money easy to borrow and therefore increase the amount of money in circulation, then suddenly tighten the money supply, taking it out of circulation by making loans more difficult to get or stopping offering them altogether.

Why did they do this? Simple, because the result would be a certain percentage of the people being unable to repay their previous loans, and not having the facility to take out new ones, so they would go bankrupt and be forced to sell their assets to the goldsmiths for literally pennies on the dollar.

This is exactly what happens in the world economy of today, but is referred to with words like, "the business cycle," "boom and bust," "recession," and "depression," in order to confuse the population of the money changers scam.
1100

King Henry I succeeds King William II to the throne of England. During his reign he decided to take the power the money changers had over the people, and he did this by creating a completely new form of money that took the form of a stick! This stick was called, a "talley stick," and ended up being the longest lasting form of currency, lasting 726 years until 1826 (even though other currencies came and went in that same period and ran alongside the talley sticks).

The talley stick was a stick of polished wood into which notches were cut along one side, to indicate the denomination of money the stick represented. The stick was then split lengthwise through the notches, so that both pieces had a record of the notches. The King kept one half to protect against counterfeiting and the other half was spent into the economy and circulated as money.

It was also one of the most successful money systems in history, as the King demanded that all the King's taxes had to be paid in, "talley sticks," so this increased their circulation and acceptance as a legitimate form of money. This system would work well in keeping the power away from the money changers in England.
1225

St. Thomas Aquinas is born, the leading theologian of the Catholic Church who argued that the charging of interest is wrong because it applies to "double charging," charging for both the money and the use of the money.

This concept followed the teachings of Aristotle that taught the purpose of money was to serve the members of society and to facilitate the exchange of goods needed to lead a virtuous life. Interest was contrary to reason and justice because it put an unnecessary burden on the use of money.

Thus, Church law in Middle Ages Europe forbade the charging of interest on loans and even made it a crime called, "usury."
1509 King Henry VIII succeeds King Henry VII to the throne in England. During his reign he relaxed the laws regarding usury, and and the money changers did not waste any time in re-asserting themselves over the population. They quickly made their gold and silver coin system plentiful again. It is interesting to note that under King Henry VIII the Church of England separated from Roman Catholicism, whose Church law prevented the charging of interest on money.
1553 Queen Mary I succeeds Lady Jane Grey's nine day reign to the throne in England. During her reign, Queen Mary I, a staunch Catholic, tightened the usury laws again. The money changers were not amused and in revenge they tightened the money supply by hoarding gold and silver coins and causing the economy to plummet.
1558 Queen Elizabeth I succeeds Queen Mary I, her half sister, to the throne in England. During her reign, Queen Elizabeth I decided that in order to wrest control of the money supply she would have to issue her own gold and silver coins. She did this through the public treasury and successfully took control of the money supply from the money changers.
1609 The money changers in the Netherlands establish the the first central bank in history, in Amsterdam.
1642 Oliver Cromwell is financed by the money changers for the purposes of fomenting a revolution in England, and allowing them to take control of the money system again. After much bloodshed, Cromwell finally purges the parliament, overthrows King Charles I and puts him to death in 1649.

The money changers immediately consolidate their power and for the next few decades plunge Great Britain into a costly series of wars. They also take over a square mile of property in the center of London which becomes known as the City of London.
1688 The money changers in England following a series of squabbles with the Stuart Kings, Charles II (1660 - 1685) and James II (1685 - 1688), conspire with their far more successful money changing counterparts in the Netherlands, who had already set up a central bank there.

They decide to finance an invasion by William of Orange of Netherlands who they sound out and establish will be more favorable to them. The invasion is successful and William of Orange ascends to the throne in England as King William III in 1689.
1694 Following a costly series of wars over the last 50 years, English Government officials go, cap in hand, to the money changers for loans necessary to pursue their political purposes. The money changers agree to solve this problem in exchange for a government sanctioned privately owned bank which could issue money created out of nothing.

This was deceptively named the, "Bank of England," for the sole purpose of duping the general public into believing it was part of the government, which it was not.

Like any other private corporation the Bank of England sold shares to get started. The private investors, whose names were never revealed, were supposed to put up £1,250,000 in gold coins to buy their shares in the bank, but only £750,000 was ever received. Despite that the bank was duly chartered and began loaning out several times the money it supposedly had in reserves, all at interest.

Although the Bank of England's private investors were never revealed, one of the Directors, William Paterson, stated,

"The Bank hath benefit of interest on all monies which it creates out of nothing.”

Furthermore the Bank of England would loan government officials as much of the new currency as they wanted, as long as they secured the debt by direct taxation of the British people. The Bank of England amounted to nothing less than the legal counterfeiting of a national currency for private gain, and thus any country that would fall under the control of a private bank would amount to nothing more than a plutocracy.

Soon after the Bank of England was formed it attacked the talley stick system, as it was money outside of the power of the money changers, just as King Henry I had intended it to be.
1698 Following four years of the Bank of England, their plan to control the money supply had come on in leaps and bounds. They had flooded the country with so much money that the Government debt to the Bank had grown from the initial £1,250,000, to £16,000,000, in only four years. That's an increase of 1,280%.

Why do they do it? Simple, if the money in circulation in a country is £5,000,000, and a central bank is set up and prints another £15,000,000, stage one of the plan, sends it out into the economy through loans etc, than this will reduce the value of the initial £5,000,000 in circulation before the bank was formed. This is because the initial £5,000,000 is now only 25% of the economy. It will also give the bank control of 75% of the money in circulation with the £15,000,000 they sent out into the economy.

This also causes inflation which is the reduction in worth of money borne by the common person, due to the economy being flooded with too much money, an economy which the Central Bank are responsible for. As the common person's money is worth less, he has to go to the bank to get a loan to help run his business etc, and when the Central Bank are satisfied there are enough people with debt out there, the bank will tighten the supply of money by not offering loans. This is stage two of the plan.

Stage three, is sitting back and waiting for the debtors to them to go bankrupt, allowing the bank to then seize from them real wealth, businesses and property etc, for pennies on the dollar. Inflation never effects a central bank in fact they are the only group who can benefit from it, as if they are ever short of money they can simply print more.
1757 Benjamin Franklin travels to England and would spend the next 18 years of his life there until just before the start of the American Revolution.
1760 Mayer Amschel Bauer changes him name to Mayer Amschel Rothschild and sets up the, House Of Rothschild, and soon learns that if he loans out money to Governments and Royalty then this is far more profitable than loaning to individuals. This is because the loans made are bigger and backed by their nations' taxes. He trains his five sons in the art of money creation.
1764

Benjamin Franklin is asked by officials of the Bank of England to explain the prosperity of the colonies in America. He replies,

"That is simple. In the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay no one."

As a result of Franklin's statement, the British Parliament hurriedly passed the Currency Act of 1764. This prohibited colonial officials from issuing their own money and ordered them to pay all future taxes in gold or silver coins. Referring to after this act was passed, Franklin would state the following in his autobiography,

"In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the colonies were filled with the unemployed...The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money which created unemployment and dissatisfaction.

The viability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of King George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war."

Control of America's money system will change hands 8 times since 1764.
1775 April 19th, start of the revolutionary war in Lexington, Massachusetts. By this time the colonies had been drained of silver and gold coins as a result of British taxation. As a result of this, the continental government had no choice but to print money to finance the war.

At the start of the revolution the American money supply stood at $12,000,000. By the end of the war it was nearly $500,000,000 and as a result the currency was virtually worthless. An example of this is that a pair of shoes now sold for $5,000 dollars. This also shows the danger of printing too much money. The reason Colonial Scrip had worked was because just enough was used to facilitate trade.
1781 Towards the end of the American Revolution the Continental Congress were desperate for money, so they allowed Robert Morris, their Financial Superintendent, to open a privately owned central bank, in the hope this would sort out the money problem.

Morris was a wealthy man who had grown wealthier during the revolution by trading in war materials. This first central bank in America was called the Bank of North America, which was set up with a four year charter, and was closely modeled after the Bank of England. It was allowed to practice the fraudulent system of fractional reserve banking, so it could create money it didn't have, then charge interest on it.

The bank's charter called for private investors to put up $400,000 of initial capital, which Morris found himself unable to raise. Nevertheless he unashamedly used his political influence to have gold deposited in the bank, which had been loaned to America by France. Morris then loaned the money he needed to buy this bank from this deposit of gold that belonged to the government, or rather the American people.

This Bank of North America, again deceptively named so the common people would believe it was under the control of the government, was given a monopoly over the national currency.
1785

Despite the promises of Robert Morris that his privately owned Bank of North America would solve the problem with the money supply, of course the economy continued to plummet, forcing the Continental Congress not to renew the bank's charter. The leader of the effort to kill this bank was William Findlay of Pennsylvania, who stated,

"This institution, having no principle but that of avarice, will never be varied in its objective...to engross all the wealth, power and influence of the state."

Mayer Amschel Rothschild moves his family home to a five storey home in Frankfurt, Germany, which he shares with the Schiff family, (a descendant of both Rothschild and Schiff, Jacob Schiff, who would be born in this house, would, some 128 years later, be instrumental in the setting up of the Federal Reserve).
1787 Colonial leaders assemble in Philadelphia to replace the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution. Governor Morris headed the final draft of the Constitution and he knew the motivation of the bankers well as he had once worked for them. Governor Morris along with his former boss Robert Morris, and Alexander Hamilton had presented the original plan for the Bank of North America to the Continental Congress, in the final year of the Revolution.

Fortunately Governor Morris by this time had discovered his conscience, defected from Robert Morris, and in a letter to James Madison dated July 2nd of this year he stated,

"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will...They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres."

James Madison was opposed to a privately owned central bank after seeing the exploitation of the people by the Bank of England. Thomas Jefferson was also against it, and Jefferson later made the following statement,

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Sadly the words of wisdom of Governor Morris and Thomas Jefferson fell on deaf ears. Alexander Hamilton, Robert Morris and Thomas Wyling, convinced the the bulk of the delegates to this Constitutional convention, not to give Congress the power to issue paper money.

They were aware that most of these delegates were still reeling from the wild inflation of the paper money during the revolution. These delegates also had short memories and didn't remember how well Colonial Scrip had worked before the war, or Benjamin Franklin's words of wisdom in 1764.

As a result the Constitution was silent on the issue of paper money by the Government for the citizens, leaving a wide open door for money changers in the future.
1790 Less than 3 years after the Constitution had been signed, the newly appointed First Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed a bill to the Congress calling for a new privately owned central bank. Interestingly, Alexander Hamilton's first job after graduating from law school in 1782 was as an aide to Robert Morris, a man who he had written to in 1781 stating, "a national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing."
1791 The three main players behind the Bank Of North America were: Robert Morris; Alexander Hamilton; and the Bank's President, Thomas Willing. These men did not give up and Alexander Hamilton, now Secretary of the Treasury, a man who described Robert Morris as his, "mentor," managed to get a new privately owned central bank through the new Congress.

This new bank was called the, "First Bank of the United States," and was exactly the same as the Bank of North America. Robert Morris controlled it, Thomas Willing was the Bank's President, only the name had changed.

This bank came into being after a year of intense debate and was given a 20 year charter. It was given a monopoly on printing United States currency even though 80% of it's stock was held by private investors. The other 20% was purchased by the United States government, but this was not to give it a piece if the action, but to provide the capital for the private investors to purchase the other 80%.

As with the Bank of England and the old Bank of North America, these private investors never paid the full agreed amount for their shares. What happened was through the fraudulent system of fractional reserve banking, the government's 20% stake which was $2,000,000 in cash, was used to make loans to its private investors to purchase the other 80% stake, £8,000,000, for this risk free investment.

Again like the Bank of England and the old Bank of North America, the name, "First Bank of the United States," was deliberately chosen to hide from the common people the fact that it was privately owned. The names of the investors in this bank were never revealed, although it is now widely believed that the Rothschilds were behind it.

Interestingly in 1790 when Alexander Hamilton proposed this bank in Congress, Mayer Amschel Rothschild made the following statement from his bank in Frankfurt, Germany, "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws."
1796

The First Bank of the United States has been controlling the American money supply for 5 years. During this time the American Government has borrowed $8,200,000 from this Central Bank, and prices in the country have increased by 72%. In relation to this, Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State stated,

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution taking from the Federal Government their power of borrowing."

1798 Mayer Amschel Rothschild sends his son, Nathan, at the age of 21, to England with a sum of money equivalent to £20,000, to set up a money changers there.
1800 In France, the Bank of France was set up. However Napoleon decided France had to break free of the debt and he therefore never trusted this bank. He declared that when a government is dependent on bankers for money, it is the bankers and not the government leaders that are in control. He stated,

"The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no motherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain."